Hardest of Hearts
by bethaboo
Summary: His wife dead and the foundation of his world shaken Chuck discovers only Blair is willing to find the answers to the many mysteries he isn't sure he wants solved. A story of love decimated and vows destroyed and the hope unexpectedly found in the ashes
1. Chapter 1

_There is love in your body,_

_but you can't hold it in._

_It pours from your eyes and it spills from your skin._

_The tenderest of touch leaves the darkest of marks;_

_and the kindest of kisses break the hardest of hearts._

* * *

><p>The dusky light from the antique glass lamps shades her skin with tones of gold-tipped rose velvet, and sets the diamonds encircling her neck and wrists ablaze with electric fire. Her dark hair is woven into an intricate swirl atop her head, tipping her chin back with its the weight—or perhaps her elegant posture is simply the gravity of a lifetime of expectation. She is lovely, exquisite even, the delicate bones of her face strong and aristocratic. Every man in the tiny bar notices her, from the elderly retiree enjoying one last glass of sherry, to the young bus boy who takes extra care to set the dishes noiselessly into the bin from the moment she arrives.<p>

She turns every man's head—all, except one. His suit is Savile Row perfection, his back bent, and his absorption into his glass of scotch complete. He spares not a single surreptitious glance for the lady beside him, yet he is the only man she looks at twice.

"Bass?" Her melodious voice is soft and hesitant, though listening to her one would easily believe she is used to speaking much more forcefully. "Chuck Bass?"

For a breathless half second, the rest of the bar's occupants hold their breath, waiting to see if the man will indeed snub her. Then he glances up, the darkness in his eyes somehow indicative of the darkness within.

"You may not remember me," she begins, only to have him give a blunt, harsh laugh.

"I think you'd be difficult to forget, Miss Waldorf." He lifts his glass, but doesn't drink, merely swirling the amber liquid and feeling its weight slosh against the crystal.

"It's Mrs. Archibald," she says, a touch defensively.

"Of course it is." He glances down, cynically noting her bare ring finger.

"Divorced, naturally," she adds self-consciously, lifting her own glass to her lips, but like him, she doesn't drink.

"I can't imagine you and Nathaniel suiting each other. You're certainly impressive, whereas he . . ." He trails off, letting her fill in the blank with whatever crimes she wishes to accuse her ex-husband of. In his experience, divorced women rarely needed help doing that.

A moment passes and though he thinks he sees a flash of annoyance in her dark eyes, she gives him a tiny smile, and says, "Nate and I remain friends, of course, which is more than I can say for you and he."

The pointed barb falls from her peony pink lips as softly as a whisper, but lands, as he is sure all her insults do, with deadly accuracy and suddenly, he remembers how swiftly the Queen B once doled out justice. It was a long time ago, in a far away place, in what feels to Chuck like a different life, but this is the same girl. She has not changed—her spine is as steely and straight as ever. It is him that has been altered, irrevocably.

"Not my decision," he says evenly, his voice modulated so well that except for the briefest of moments, he is sure that he's fooled even her. _Try again_, his smirk tells her, _you didn't quite hit the mark yet._

His mistake is to assume that an initial fire-and-miss is enough to make her give up. What he remembers—belatedly—is that Blair Cornelia Waldorf-Archibald is not only tenacious, but stubborn to a fault.

And she likes to win as much as he does—or at least as much as he used to.

"Perhaps at first," she confides sweetly, "but I find it difficult to believe that Bart's guards stayed with you all through the _Sorbonne _and then when you started the French branch of Bass Industries. Surely they were not with you on your honeymoon."

His lips thin and he feels a spark, a flame, even, of rage. He thought he'd be immune to the anger at this point, but Blair's pointed reminder of his marriage resurrects and breathes new life into the fury inside him.

"No," he grinds out. He wants to say more, the words spinning through his head at an unbearable speed, but he can't pick out one single insult, and the cruel phrases will not align themselves into a reasonable order, so he doesn't.

She, however, does.

"I didn't think so," Blair continues, the self-satisfied edge to her voice growing harder, more defined. "But then, it was so long ago, and you wanted to 'start over.'"

"Bart wanted me to. And then I decided it wasn't such a terrible idea. After all, what was left for me in New York?"

Blair looks momentarily astonished, but buries the emotion deep, before he can do more than catch a single glimpse of it. "Nothing," she agrees with him. "There was nothing left for you in New York."

He is silent at her words. She couldn't know that she's describing how he now feels about Paris. She also couldn't know that such a revelation devastates him, as if every single tie he spent ten years building has been cut in one fell swoop.

He builds for a living, and knows the importance of a strong, unshakeable foundation. This, he knows, is what is left of a man when he discovers that every single beam, every single ounce of concrete poured, is faulty and false.

Finally, he asks the question that's been sitting, unasked, between them since she entered the small Parisian bar a quarter of an hour before. "Why are you here, Blair?"

She shrugs, a surprisingly Gallic gesture that reminds him so much of his wife that his heart literally hurts. He doesn't know whether to believe the surge of bitter hatred or the aching emptiness of loss. Both seem strangely appropriate.

"I don't want you here," he adds, trying to communicate via the blank stare he gives her that he means it. Not only that she is unwelcome, but that she's an unsolicited visitor from a past that he could care less about remembering. "Or in any other place that I choose to frequent."

He throws a fifty euro note on the shiny mahogany of the bar, the grimy coloring staring up at her as he walks out, and she doesn't know where she went wrong, except that when she calls Lily, she will have to tell her that it is much worse than anyone anticipated. That Chuck, who up until eight months ago was a well-adjusted, happy businessman in love with his _soignée _Parisian wife, is broken and bitter, empty of both politesse and charm. Basically, he's the Chuck everyone knew so long ago in New York.

The Chuck she used to love, all those many years ago.

* * *

><p>Blair catches up with him on the sidewalk outside, her Louboutins making decisive clicking noises on the stone. He used to be able to know it was Eva behind him simply by the distinctive gait of her walk. <em>Tap tap, tap tap tap, tap tap. <em>Sometimes when he's had too much scotch, he can hear her behind him on the streets of Montmarte. Not tonight. Tonight he hears another ghost from the past, this one all too real.

"I'm sorry about Eva," Blair says bluntly. "I know you loved her."

How can he explain to Blair that it wasn't just love that leaves him empty now? How can he explain to a woman who is still friendly with her ex-husband, a man she has known her entire lifetime, about promises made—promises that were never meant to be broken? He hypothesizes that Blair, who probably decided to get divorced between the salad course and the fish course at one of her mother's business dinners, is incapable of understanding.

To Blair, love is not love, but a decision made by a calculating and power-hungry mind; the heart is only a fleeting thought for her. The hurt she'd exacted that he thought completely eradicated by Eva's sweet smiles somehow resurfaces and joins the myriad of betrayals he feels.

"If Lily sent you, which I am sure she did, you can tell her that I'm fine. _Fine_." He refuses to turn around to see her because if he does, he may throw something in her vicinity. His loss of temper surprises him—it has been ages since he even contemplated such a failure of self-control. Emotions still flare within him, but outside he is cold and smooth as ice.

"You're not fine," she says flatly. Finally. "You're _not _fine. Your wife died. I don't think you're supposed to be _fine_."

"Well, I _am_," he practically growls at her as he senses her come closer. Too close. Her nearness scares him; her very presence is terrifying. He is not ready for her. In truth, he is not ready for anyone.

"You were always a terrible liar," Blair says softly this time, all accusation and judgment gone from her voice. "Terrible." There is the minutest tremble at the last word. And just like before, like twenty years ago, when he was so learned and yet so naïve, he wonders if the real Blair Cornelia is the calculating queen or if there is indeed a heart buried under all the sophisticated, icy veneer.

"I'm not the man you used to know," he tells her because it's the truth, and of course, she is right—he was never any good at lying.

"I would hope not. The old Chuck Bass was a selfish egomaniac with a penchant for drugs, booze and whores."

"I'm not even . . ._that _man," he starts, then isn't sure how to describe the man he was with Eva. A figurehead? A man floating through his life, so sure that it adored him as much as he adored it? "I'm not good," he finally growls out, devoid of any true explanation.

But of course, an explanation isn't necessary because this is Blair, and years and years ago, she used to know him better than he knew himself. Then he was ordered to Paris, he met Eva and he re-learned everything about who he was. Except now, Chuck is beginning to suspect that the remodeling Eva encouraged was less of a permanent change and more of a band aid applied to hungers that never really died.

"Of course you're not that good," Blair scoffs, the dark sheen of her hair glinting under the pink light of Montmartre. Against his will, he remembers the way the silken strands felt as they slipped between his hands like water. He remembers them spread out on a limo seat—the thought barely has time to form in his mind before he shuts it down. He tells himself it doesn't matter that he once thought the incident permanently erased from his mind; the resurfacing is only due to her sudden presence. "You never were."

He is silent. The rage still lies in the back of his mind, and it isn't just at Eva. He doesn't want Blair here, prodding and poking at him.

"It's such a lovely evening for a walk," Blair chatters away, as if she has no idea that the monster inside him is seething with annoyance.

"No, it isn't," Chuck snaps.

"Of course it isn't." The ironic tone of her voice squeezes so much meaning in that one sentence that Chuck knows exactly how she feels about his lack of enjoyment. She thinks he has lost the thread of his life, and he hates her for being right.

He stops suddenly, and she continues on for a half a step before turning to face him, his expression dark and grim under the streetlight. "We're not doing this, Blair."

Her own expression goes clean and innocent, almost nun-like, but he knows better than to believe the visage.

"I'm not entirely sure what you mean, Bass."

He stares stonily at her. "This," he grinds out, the anger starting to build again. She is acting as if this is some sort of joyous, tear-filled reunion, and all he wants to do is drown out his sorrow and his anger and his rage, and he doesn't want her to see him do it. Twenty years have passed, but the tiny corner of his heart that he hadn't relinquished to Eva remembers Blair and his pride won't permit her to know it.

"Lily sent you to check up on me, to make sure I haven't thrown myself into the Seine yet. Well, you have your status report for her. Go away and leave me be."

Blair is quiet, a contemplative expression on her lovely face. He is even (mostly) sure that she hasn't had any work done yet. She's grown into her beauty as he knew she would. At 18, Serena often eclipsed her, but now years later, Chuck is sure it's Blair who turns men's heads wherever they go.

"I didn't only come for Lily," she says softly, so softly that he can barely hear her over the sounds of Paris. "She did call, but I came for me. And for you."

He shakes his head. This woman in her black cashmere coat, a fortune of diamonds around her neck, dark eyes knowing and wise, yet still vaguely impetuous—he feels as if he _should _know her, but she is a stranger now. They are strangers now.

Chuck pushes away the memory of leather against his skin, of dark hair falling over the smoothest skin he'd ever had the privilege to touch, to _worship_, and turns and walks away from her. This time she does not follow.

* * *

><p>The next morning, over her <em>café au lait<em>, Blair can't help but wonder if she should gone against her better judgment and followed.

She's spent years wondering if she should have chased him across the Atlantic, demanded that Bart let her see him—she could have dug up something, _anything_, that would have given her enough leverage to convince him. But instead, fear bottled up all that difficult emotion inside of her and she had done nothing. She had let him go, and had spent years wondering if it had been the right decision.

The morning she married Nate, Blair swore to herself that she wouldn't spend any more of her precious minutes wondering about the _what-if s._

So this morning, much like that other morning, Blair swallows a hot mouthful of espresso and skim milk and tells herself that she is perfectly content with her life—a life without Chuck Bass.

"Darling." Eleanor Waldorf doesn't walk into a room; she still moves as if she's a float and it's Thanksgiving morning on Fifth Avenue. Leaning down to brush a kiss over her daughter's cheek, Eleanor pulls back slightly, a frown creasing her brow. Unlike most society matrons of her generation, Eleanor believes fervently in unvarnished honesty, which includes her age.

"You look exhausted," she chides, sitting at the head of the table. "Maybe a spa day will clear up those circles under your eyes."

Blair nods absently, all too aware that the cause of her sleepless nights isn't a lack of relaxation but a lack of resolution—and since Chuck has so graciously denied her that privilege for over ten years, he isn't likely to start now.

"I'm off to the _atelier _today," Eleanor continues, barely noticing that Blair never acquiesced to her suggestion. "And tonight, there's a dinner."

Blair nods again, the activities of Eleanor's day hardly unusual. Her mind is consumed with thoughts.

With regrets.

He has not come to see her after all. Ten years ago, she barely had to glance at him sideways, and he would inevitably be drawn to her side. They used to vibrate at nearly the exact same frequency, but those days are long gone. Blair tells herself that she would be smart to remember this, and the next time Lily calls, as she inevitably will, she will extend her regrets. Coming to Paris has been a mistake.

Blair rouses herself from her apathy and musters a smile at her mother. It's merely a shadow, but it suffices. "What dinner?"

"Lagerfeld," Eleanor says, finishing her own _café_. She glances across the table at her daughter, and her gaze sharpens. "You're invited, of course. I sent regrets earlier, but I'm sure that can be remedied."

Blair remembers that she told her mother she hadn't come to Paris to socialize, and no doubt apologies were sent in response to each invitation that was delivered to her mother's apartment here. Stupidly, she had imagined her time occupied, but the task Lily charged her with has been completed and there is no longer any reason to cloister herself away. In fact, Blair thinks she might scream if forced to spend another evening cooped up with only her thoughts for company.

"That would be lovely, thank you."

"The car will be here at nine sharp," Eleanor reminds her, exiting the sunroom in a flutter of Chanel No. 5 and cashmere.

Dutifully, Blair lifts herself from her chair, determined that despite the ruin of her hopes, she will not feel sorry for herself.

* * *

><p>Chuck is woken at precisely seven by his valet. Ten months ago, he would have brushed a kiss over his sleeping wife's head, and risen to shower, dress, and head into the office.<p>

These days he merely brushes off the man, and buries his face back into his eight hundred thread count Egyptian cotton sheets. Sometimes he goes into the office late at night and finishes days, often weeks, of work in a marathon frenzy. He tells himself as he staggers to the limo that the reason he still attempts to keep up is so Bart's legacy will not fail.

He knows it's because he can no longer stand the maudlin repetition of his own thoughts. At least thinking about business means that, if only for a few hours, he can focus on something that makes him feel whole.

This particular morning, Chuck realizes that in the last six months, there has been one other moment that can even compete for that particular feeling: last night, when he glanced up and realized that Blair Cornelia Waldorf-Archibald was sitting at the bar, watching him intently.

For years, he has kept the memory, the _feeling_, of her, at bay. It was easy with Eva—making her happy consumed his every thought; was the focus of his entire being. But being with Blair last night felt different. Not the same as it was with Eva, but _good _nonetheless, and good is not something that Chuck can take for granted anymore.

He thinks this is why he turned and left her standing on a bridge overlooking the Seine. He has always been good at leaving people—he left her when Bart ordered him to France and refused to let him even pick up the shattered fragments of his former life. His new life embraced him, and he'd not thought of her, sure that she would behave similarly. But last night, Chuck thought he might have seen a hint of regret in her eyes.

That trace is enough to destroy his peace of mind for the second time in the last year, and despite that he knows better (this _is _Blair, after all), he is intrigued by her sudden reappearance in his life.

It isn't seven in the morning, but it's the earliest he's risen in months when he leans over and picks up his phone. He dials almost without thinking, and when the man answers, he speaks almost casually, as if he has been doing this all along. The truth is, he hasn't. It's the first thread of a life that didn't unravel just six months ago, but more like ten years ago.

"Andrew Tyler."

"Tyler, it's Bass. I need some information on a Blair Cornelia Waldorf-Archibald."

"Good to hear from you, Mr. Bass. Mrs. Archibald's place of residence?"

"Typically New York, but right now, she's in Paris. With me."

Tyler says nothing, behaves normally as if this isn't the first time in nearly ten years that a Bass has used the retainer that Bass Industries still holds over his head. But the pregnant pauses in-between his words are enough and when Chuck hangs up, his desires expressed to the detective, he wonders what the hell he is doing.

Eva had forbidden him to utilize Tyler or any of his cronies, insisting that for their relationship to be real and true, unconditional trust had to exist between them. He'd never had reason to doubt her, so he had let the connections he'd developed in New York crumble. He'd never formed new ones in Paris.

With recent discoveries come to light, Chuck wonders if he was smart to believe his wife or if he should have questioned. Blair, he knows, would have questioned.

Ten years ago, he took one look at Eva's unquenchable, nearly naïve faith and trust and toppled head over heels. This morning, Eva's motives suddenly in question, Chuck can't help but respect the way Blair always looked for the angle.

He wonders what she would make of his angle this gray Parisian morning.

* * *

><p>"We'll always have Paris," Blair mutters bitterly to herself as she sips her champagne.<p>

A memory, Blair is learning, isn't always yours to direct at will. It sneaks up and takes your entire being hostage before you can steel yourself against it. So it is with Bass. So it's always been.

In any case, they won't ever have Paris. The only thing they had in common is over and finished, ashes scattered in the wind, and she needs to finally realize it.

"What was that, Blair dear?" Cecile, one of her mother's oldest Parisian friends, if you can truly call any of Eleanor's acquaintances "friends," inquires.

"Oh it was nothing, Madame Colbert," Blair covers hastily, deferentially tilting her head towards the older woman. "Nothing at all."

Luckily, another of their circle covers Blair's _faux pas_. Blair has never met Madame Girard before tonight's _soiree_, but she already does not like the false _politesse_ that emanates from her like a bad perfume.

"It has been a long time since I was in New York," Madame Girard says with transparently fake sweetness, "but I heard a rumor, last time I was there, that your ex-husband married Serena Van der Woodsen. That could not possibly be true, could it?"

Blair vaguely hears Cecile's barely suppressed gasp of astonishment—everyone talked, of course, but she'd never imagined that anyone would brazenly ask her directly. This is why she came to Paris, Blair remembers belatedly. She was sick of being asked why she'd ever allowed her best friend to marry her ex-husband, as if she could have done anything to keep Serena and Nate apart. As if it was _her _decision that they fall in love in the first place.

She had known before the marriage, long before the wedding even, that she and Nate weren't in love, but their relationship had been an expedient solution to the devastation left in the wake of Chuck leaving New York.

"It's true," Blair finally admits, holding her head high, daring any of these piranhas to see even the barest hint of shame in her face. Shrugging, she continues with a blasé tone, as if she could have cared less that Nate had moved on to better, blonder pastures. "He was always in love with her, from when we were children, and our marriage. . ." Blair pauses and shakes her head almost imperceptibly. Let them finish the rest of _that_ sentence, she thinks savagely.

She's not mad at either of them. Not really anyway. She gave her permission after all, believing that at least the two of them should be happy. She herself has long given up on that luxury, and has settled for half-truths like "comfortable" and "satisfied."

Happiness is for romance novels and Audrey Hepburn films.

"And nobody can blame you for leaving the man," Cecile adds and Blair is momentarily surprised by the vehemence in her tone. Cecile has never been especially friendly to her, but maybe she is not so terrible after all.

Or maybe Cecile is simply appalled at the bad manners of confronting the subject of all the gossip.

Blair taps her empty champagne glass and offers it as her excuse to leave the group, who continue chattering as she moves away. But she doesn't procure another glass—instead she slips through a half-closed door and finds herself in the quiet of a marble-floored landing at the top of a majestic red-carpeted stairway.

But the luxurious appointments of her salvation don't interest her. She'd thought she needed an evening away from her thoughts, but now, she can't wait to escape the nosy gossips who seem determine to chase her from both New York _and _Paris.

She gazes out the huge window into the rose-tinted City of Light, and wonders if she is not safe here then where she will go next. Unbidden, she thinks of Chuck and his need to run and wonders if she has become more like him than she would care to admit even to herself. She cannot face the constant whispers about her divorce and her ex-husband's remarriage, and she loathes the creeping, poisonous jealousy that grips her whenever she witnesses their happiness. Everyone would think it is the man she is jealous of, but having experienced being married to Nate Archibald once, she is definitely fine leaving him to Serena.

There has only been one man who turned her world upside down, and it was only to escape the devastation of his memory that she married at all.

* * *

><p>If Chuck has even the slightest hesitation of the wisdom of this next move, the way he happens upon her almost by accident settles the last of his questions.<p>

He thought he couldn't wait to be rid of her, but he cannot deny the pull she holds for him. The tantalizing zing of feeling life rushes back into the tips of his fingers, his toes, and then throughout his entire body, and it's like the gasp of fresh air after a lifetime underground.

Telling himself that he merely wishes to talk to her again, to capture that time so long ago when they were each other's greatest confidante, he climbs the stairs, his eyes never leaving the graceful curve of her back, draped in fire engine red chiffon.

But before he can telegraph his presence, she must sense him, because she half-turns and catches him staring.

"If you want me to leave you alone, you have to stop stalking me," Blair says with amusement in her voice. If she is surprised to see him there, she hides it completely.

"Of course, how silly of me." He pauses at the top of the staircase. Her hair is up again, this time simply pulled back into a sleek chignon. He wants to yank the pins out and see it tumble to her shoulders in a bohemian, completely inappropriate way. _Like that night in the limo_. "I realized that I forgot to tell you a last message to pass on to Lily."

Her lips curve upwards into a genuine smile. "And might I ask why you couldn't deliver this message yourself?"

"Because you're so conveniently here for that purpose. I wouldn't want to waste your trip."

"Of course not." Blair's real smile is still present, and it has deepened. He is ridiculously pleased at this, but can't manage to berate himself for smiling back. His cheek muscles hurt as his lips stretch wide; he can't even remember the last time he smiled like this.

Then he realizes; it wasn't just months ago, but maybe more like years. Maybe the last time he traded quips with New York's reigning queen of witty repartee.

"I'm going back to work." He does not know he is going to say it—or even _what _he is going to give as a message—until the words are out of his mouth. To his even greater surprise, he means them. "In a month," he adds, because strangely he does not want to scare her away from Paris, and from him.

"Lily will be pleased to hear it, I'm sure," she says smoothly, betraying none of her own surprise. "But why a month?"

"There are things I need to finish looking into," he says, again astonished at his own words. Up until this point, he has never even let himself consider the possibility that he would ever examine the circumstances under which Eva died. She had died, and that was enough for him. But there is a growing, deep-seated fear that she played him and had been doing it for a very long time. Before, when he was in the thick of his grief, he could have cared less, but his anger at her possible betrayal is growing inside of him like a disease. If he doesn't do anything to curb it, he's afraid it might consume him completely.

"Things?" Blair raises an eyebrow and it dawns on him that he came here tonight because he wanted to tell her. No—he _needed _to tell her. He can't hold it inside any longer, he is nearly splintering apart with the pain, the devastation, and anger and he needs to tell someone, and he has picked her. It shouldn't surprise him, he supposes, she used to be the person who knew everything, and despite it all, he still feels like he could trust her.

The sympathy of every Parisian acquaintance at his wife's death was suffocating enough, but every kind word and bouquet of flowers was a double-edged reminder that he could never truly express to anybody why he wasn't only sad, but blindingly angry. Until tonight, when he realizes that he can tell Blair. Nobody else might possibly be able to understand, but she is cut from tougher cloth than most other society misses he has met. Maybe that was why she always fascinated him so—the delicate beauty merged with the spine of tempered steel is a unique combination in their world.

"Chuck." Blair's words snap him back to reality; back from the funeral, and the wake, and the last mind-numbing eight months. "Charles. Are you alright?"

She has not called him Charles in a long time. Eva used to call him Charles, and though he hated the name, hated it because Bart had always used it when he had done something wrong, he never told her to stop. But Blair has none of Eva's delicate sensibilities.

"It's Chuck. Like it's always been."

"I thought so." Her smile widens again, like a cat who's just enjoyed a saucer of thick cream. Nothing pleases Blair more than being right. "I had to get your attention."

In another time, another life, he might have charmingly told her that she'd always had it—but today, he holds his tongue, reminding himself that he isn't the same man he used to be.

"Do you want to leave?" He is not sure he can confess the sordid details of his wife's death at a society party that Eva might have frequented only a year ago. Actually, he is not sure he can be here at all—the only motivation that resulted in him in a tuxedo and walking through the door was the knowledge that Blair was inside.

"You just got here," she objects. "And the dinner hasn't begun."

"Are you hungry?" he asks, and she gives him a long speculative look before shaking her head.

"Neither am I. But I could use a drink." He hesitates, and then holds his arm out, the way the deportment teacher had taught him so many years ago in New York.

She takes it as gracefully and perfectly as she did then. He remembers the way the teacher used to fawn over Serena's boisterous charms, but he always preferred Blair's delicate, restrained movements.

Maybe less has changed than he likes to think.


	2. Chapter 2

The bar is nearly identical to the café in Montmartre they'd met at the night before, except this time Chuck chooses a corner table, away from the lights and people. Whatever he wants to say, Blair can only surmise that he does not wish to be overheard.

Typically, it might take half an hour for a waitress to make her way to their table, but there is a powerful aura around one of the world's youngest billionaires, and one appears within two minutes. Chuck orders a bottle of scotch, two glasses and a bucket of ice.

Blair settles back into the well-worn, brocade-covered booth and pulls her black velvet wrap a shade tighter around her shoulders. Even though it was her who had sought him out in the first place, she wasn't expecting the way her heart had raced when she'd taken his arm. For a breathless half-second, she'd been nearly paralyzed with the same intense longing she'd felt so many years ago. He represents everything she has lost, and Blair knows she is too smart to keep throwing herself after the same unobtainable goal—but it appears that under certain circumstances, logic no longer counts. So despite the fear, she is still here, sitting next to him, letting him order drinks.

Ice cubes clink into a squat, heavy glass, and they crack as the scotch hits them in a smooth, solid pour. Chuck hands her the glass, and their hands brush minutely, the first skin-to-skin contact they've had in almost ten years. Blair jerks back, the frissons of electricity still sparkling along her nerves. Scotch sloshes over the side of the glass, and she surreptitiously wipes her hand on a napkin. He ignores the mishap and pours his own liquor before turning back to her. There is no knowing laughter or irrepressible charm in his eyes—they are deadly serious and nothing like what she was expecting. Of course, Blair is not certain what her expectations were when he asked her for a drink, but this mature earnestness was not one of them.

She'd always known that he would have to change—that change would be imperative if he was to truly succeed in this new life he had carved for himself in Paris. She'd known that Eva was part of the astonishing transformation of Chuck Bass, irresponsible party boy and womanizer to Charles Bass, respected businessman and head of Bass Industries France. But until this moment she has not really come to terms with the new man in the old skin. He looks nearly the same as he did, but the internal parts have all changed, and Blair is left grasping for something sane and familiar.

"Do you know how . . ." Chuck takes a deep breath and swallows, a tendon in his neck in stark relief to his pale skin. Blair does not have to glance down to see that he is clenching the edge of the table with one hand and the other is gripping the glass of Scotch. "Eva . . .how Eva died?"

If she needed one irrevocable bit of evidence that he was deeply in love with his dead wife, this is it, Blair thinks. She will never need another, after watching him struggle to even speak Eva's name. The feeling that she has lost him is familiar, but it hurts just the same.

"I heard it was an accident." Her voice is low and controlled, her throat tight with the need to modulate the hurt she feels for him. Loss is loss, and it's something she unfortunately understands too well.

He nods sharply and stares into his glass. "A drunk driver pushed her car over the edge of a bridge and into the Seine."

Blair does not know what to say when faced with the horror of what he must have felt. She briefly considers touching him sympathetically on the arm, but after their last brief touch, she knows it's a mistake—at least for her. So she settles for a meaningless sympathetic sound, but he ignores her completely.

He lifts the glass and takes a long swallow. Eyes never leaving the contents of his glass, he continues, voice hard and unrelenting. "And she was not alone."

Blair fumbles with her glass and finally sets it down on the table before she can to spill scotch all over the two of them. "I don't understand. She wasn't alone? I never read that there was anyone else in the car."

His voice becomes even harder as he says, "I couldn't very well let anyone else know that my wife, _my wife_, was with another man when she died."

Blair feels like Paris is tilting under her feet. There are so many questions running through her head that she can't decide which to pick and so she simply stares at him in open-mouthed shock.

"Who was it?" she asks quietly, because what else can she really ask? She can't tell him that the possibility that any woman would cheat on him is absurd; that if they had been together, she would never have looked at another man twice; that she was deeply in love with him ten years ago, and the idea of some strange Parisian woman using and betraying him cuts deeply into a hurt already sore and tender.

"I don't really know," Chuck admits. "He wasn't someone I knew, but she would never have gotten into a car with a stranger."

"But she died eight months ago," Blair bursts out, unable to hold her tongue. "You've had eight months to find out who he was!"

He is silent, contemplating his scotch and refusing to meet her entreating, earnest gaze.

"Chuck," Blair begins again, trying for a more dignified, in-control tone, "I know you cared for her, but that shouldn't make a difference. You have to find out who it was, and what she was doing with him. You can't simply sweep it under the rug and expect to forget it."

His fist comes down heavy and hard on the solid wooden table, shaking the bucket and nearly sending the bottle of scotch over. Blair prides herself on the fact that she doesn't react to his sudden outburst, but inside she is incredulous. The Chuck Bass she knew in New York would never have let this betrayal happen, nevermind let it go uninvestigated eight months later.

She opens her mouth to tell him exactly this, and that he's an idiot too, but he speaks first.

"It's not the kind of thing you can forget, Blair. But goddamnit, she made a fool of me. Of our life. Of what we had together."

"Which is why you kept it a secret," Blair murmurs, sympathy that's completely different than the pseudo-empathy she'd been feeling previously spreading through her. He's been struggling with the foundations of what he feels these last eight months, all while trying to hide his internal war from everyone. It's no wonder Lily is deeply concerned for him.

Chuck isn't merely mourning a person; he's mourning the loss of an idea, of a beacon that he pinned every hope, aspiration, and goal to.

"You probably think I'm an idiot," Chuck sighs, the anger deflating out of him like a balloon being pricked.

"Yes," she says unrelentingly—but she knows that he needs tough love right now. He needs her to hold the mirror up unflinchingly and let him see what he's let himself become—not just in the last eight months, but in the last ten years.

He takes another sip of scotch. When he sets it down, there is something else in his eyes. It might be nostalgia, but she can't let her hopes rise.

"We used to own New York," he says, and she can't help but nod. She can't blame him for revisiting old times, especially now. "You and I could have done anything we set our collective minds to."

"Except agree," Blair adds lightly, desperately trying to remind herself that this merely a temporary jaunt down memory lane for him. Nothing more.

He glances up at her, stark honesty in his eyes. "I've changed, Blair. I'm king in the boardroom, but I don't rule the way I used to. The way we used to."

"You changed," she shrugs. "It happens to the best of us."

"But not you," he points out, and she can't help but nod. She's more realistic now, and has left the manipulations of Constance-Billard behind, but her methods have only evolved to fit a bigger stage.

"But not me," she agrees evenly. He's right, Blair thinks fatally, she hasn't changed since she ruled Constance-Billard. She'd married the man that society had hand-picked for her, and the divorce had only occurred because he'd been so obviously in love with her best friend.

She's been stuck in a rut for ten years, waiting and waiting and waiting and she knows now, has maybe always known, that what she was waiting for was for him to come home. What she had yet to realize was that he'd already come home, and it wasn't to her. She is almost thirty years old, and she has spent the majority of those years in a holding pattern, passively expecting life to come to her.

Something hard and painful snaps inside of her and shatters her self-possession. "You need to know who he was. What she was doing with him," she blurts out, and to her horror, the word regurgitation continues. "You'll never be able to move on, you'll be stuck where you are now."

Blair feels her heart thumping hard against her ribs, and she prays that he does not put two and two together and realize she is not speaking so much for him as she is speaking for herself. She waited for years for him to come to the realization that he loved her as much as she loved him, and now she is done waiting. It's time she took an active role in her own life.

"You need to know, and I can help you." Blair was always a consummate gambler—not with money or things necessarily, but there's a certain flair to gambling with desire or power. And this gamble is with both.

Chuck says nothing, only shifts the glass under the dim candlelight of the table, and Blair knows she is holding her breath.

"You could," he finally admits. "If I wanted to be helped."

"Chuck," Blair rolls her dice one final time, "you wanted me to leave you alone last night. You sought me out tonight. You did so for a reason. _This _reason. You needed to tell me what happened, because you couldn't tell anybody else. Let me help you lay this to rest." Blair knows she has never made such an honest, heartfelt entreaty in her entire life. In fact, twenty years of learning how to manipulate and convince has been poured into her argument. If he doesn't agree to her help, then there is truly nothing else she can do to convince him—she has pulled out every tool in her possession.

He says nothing for a minute, for two, and Blair feels lightheaded before she realizes she's been holding her breath.

"So that's the way you want to play it, then?"

Surprise makes her breathless. Or maybe that is the way his dark eyes are mesmerizing hers from across the tiny table. Blair doesn't know when the spider became the fly, or when the predator became the prey. "I'm not certain what you're referring to."

"Nothing of your own to confess, then?"

There are plenty of things she could confess, but she's sure that there's nothing he would find particularly interesting. A few petty wars against rival New York socialites'. Then there was that time when she toyed with the idea of becoming a Princess, before she remembered how unpleasant it was to be married for appearances and sent the Prince back to where he came from. The one secret she's kept over the years that he would find intriguing he doesn't deserve to know.

She shakes her head.

"I already dipped my toes earlier." He swirls the scotch in the glass. "I called my PI and had him compile a report on you, Blair."

Her blood goes cold, her hands clammy. He couldn't have. . .no. . .it's not possible. She covered her tracks too completely. Even a private investigator of Chuck's level could never have found it.

"Why the hell did you let Nate go and marry Serena?" he asks, annoyance rife in his voice, and for the first time tonight she feels a jolt of savage justice. She still remembers his spark of interest at the way she'd introduced herself. He'd noted that she was divorced from Nate. Apparently who he married after her made a difference to someone other than the gossips of the world.

She shrugs casually, determined that he will never see the secret well of hurt over the entire affair. She'd kept her head high during the divorce and she isn't about to let it fall now.

"We married young, and neither of us was happy. When he and Serena fell in love, I didn't see the problem."

"You didn't see the problem," Chuck grounds out. "Were you trying to make yourself a target for every gossip in the New York metropolitan area?"

"Oh, they're certainly not confined to New York," she says lightly. "Just earlier, I had to hear about it all again, from a Parisian acquaintance of my mother's."

"You could have told them no. They would have respected your wishes. They used to love you, and I'm sure that hasn't changed."

He is too close to her well of hurt; too close to the reason why she let Nate and Serena marry in the first place. Blair grits her teeth and slips her game face on. "They desperately wanted to be together. It would have been wrong to stop them."

"You've changed your tune. Or maybe that romantic streak's always been lurking inside you. I do remember a fondness for Hepburn."

"Despite your opinion of me, I'm not hard as nails," she spits back at him, annoyed that again he has hit her where she is most vulnerable. She is not an ice queen, especially not when it comes to him, but he has never realized this, and though she thought herself steeled to the pain a long time ago, she discovers that it still hurts.

"No," he says quietly. "You're not. Which is why you're running from New York. Admit it, Blair, I was a convenient excuse to get away from the gossip."

She almost retorts that this _was _true, until she discovered tonight that the story has traveled across the Atlantic with her. The truth is that the reasons for her trip to Paris are myriad. It was indeed convenient that she might escape the wagging tongues of her social circle, but the moment Lily proposed that she seek out Chuck in Paris, that he might not turn away from her, Blair has been ensnared in a fantasy that will not dim even with an enormous amount of evidence that disproves its validity.

In the end, it's better that he thinks she is here for his reason, instead of hers. "Fine," she admits levelly, "Paris was foremost an escape. You just happened to be here, and Lily asked me to look you up and make sure you weren't dangling from your suspenders."

It would be simple for him to check the order of events—that the idea for Paris came from Lily, not from any ill-advised escape attempt of Blair's—but he has not spoken to Lily since his wife died and only sporadically before that. Unless he has a reason to suspect she is lying, and he won't, there is no reason for him to check her story.

"So you've dragged your demons from New York, and now you want to help exhume mine," he finally says.

"I suppose it's only fair," she says, trying to keep the note of triumph out of her voice.

"Blair," he says heavily, and his eyes go mournful. "This isn't going to be . . .easy. . .for me."

"I know," she says, and this time she does reach across the tabletop to touch the sleeve of his tuxedo jacket. She can feel the warm arm underneath the fabric and flashes of memory assault her before she gently removes her fingers.

"But I'm glad it's you."

She's glad too.


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: ****Thanks everyone for the encouraging reviews. I know I'm cranking out these slowly, but now that the plot is really chugging along, it should get faster. Thanks also to Steph who took time out of her busy schedule to beta this for me.**

**A lot of questions on when this exactly diverts from the show's storyline. More on this later, but an estimate is Spring of Chuck and Blair's junior year (season one). He left ten years ago, and was married for just about 7 years. Eva died 8 months ago. Blair's divorce from Nate happened two years ago, and he and Serena married six months ago. I hope that helps set the timeline a bit better.  
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* * *

><p>"Blair," Chuck explains patiently for the fifth time that hour, "I covered my tracks."<p>

"No," she snaps, "you didn't just cover them; you obliterated them." He knows how annoyed she must be with him, with the situation, because her normally ramrod straight back bends as she sinks back into the chair. He thinks he hears her say, _"amateur,_" under her breath and he has to take a deep breath of his own to keep from issuing a defensive rebuttal.

She is right, he supposes. The Chuck Bass he used to be would never have let this go, and he certainly never would have done everything in his power to make the evidence evaporate into thin air.

The Chuck Bass he became thought that with time, he could eventually forget, but it turns out he hasn't changed quite that much.

He tries to explain for the sixth time. "I didn't want anybody to know. It's . . .humiliating," he grinds out. "I didn't want to think about it, and I certainly didn't want anyone else to."

Blair's expression softens and he's reminded of the girl she used to be. Sometimes it's hard to remember that somewhere inside this self-possessed, devastatingly beautiful woman there is a vulnerable, sensitive girl.

"I understand," she says quietly, and Chuck realizes that she would. Her dirty laundry has been aired for the world to discuss and she has born it with class and dignity.

Under the cataclysmic pressures, he shattered, but she's only ever bent; she has never broken. He's never lacked admiration for the Queen B, but he can't help but gaze at her now with an even deeper respect. She catches his stare and for a split second, Chuck thinks that he might see a hint of a blush on her pale ivory cheek, but before he can categorize the correct shade of peony, it's disappeared and he can only wonder if it was just his imagination playing tricks on him.

They are both walking wounded; it would be not only foolish to revisit the past, but impossible. He is sure she got over him years ago, and as for himself. . .whatever she rouses in him can only be remnants of a nostalgic past.

"Surely there is something else to be done," Blair insists again. "Some trace of evidence you didn't destroy."

He is about to open his mouth to tell her that he ruined it all, when he remembers one thing he left alone. He is terrified to tell her, but in the end he is more terrified that he will never know the truth.

"There _is _something," he finally says, and he barely masks the hesitancy in his tone. She will know anyway, when she sees it. She always knows.

* * *

><p>"Chuck, I can't open this."<p>

He's been waiting for her to explicitly express her reluctance. From the moment they stepped into the mansion he shared with Eva, she has been hesitant, eyes darting from a Froganard on the foyer wall to the antique Aubusson on the staircase landing. She moved slower when he opened to the door to Eva's dressing room and attached closet and she had realized where he was leading her. Strangely, he expected his own footsteps to be more reluctant, but it is hers that drag. Blair's eyes are shuttered and blank, and he can't read her expression in the dim lighting of the room. But despite all of this, he knows that this is the very last place in Paris she wishes to be.

He nods again at the box he took down from the very back corner of the vast closet he designed for Eva after the house was purchased. He's known of the box's existence for almost as long, but he has never touched it. He knew better when Eva was alive, and after her death, he was too terrified of its contents to unleash Pandora's box.

Blair, he knows, can have none of these qualms, and so he gives it to her.

She stares it down, her gaze intent and utterly fixed, and if Blair was any other woman—any other being than uniquely herself—he would never be able to trust that she would face her fear. But it's not just her fear, it's his as well, and he nearly trembles as she reaches out a hand to lift the lid.

The box itself is remarkably innocuous; a simple cardboard affair covered in a faded rose patterned paper, the lid fastened with cheap brass hinges that look as if they might simply disintegrate under the pressure of all the expectation in the room.

Blair exhales as she lifts the lid and peers in. Her face is so completely closed that he can find nothing of the box's contents in its contours. Finally, she reaches in and the first item she raises to his view is a silver pocket watch, embellished on the face, and tarnished with age.

He cannot explain the sudden violence of his reaction, cannot begin to understand why instantly he feels smothered and breathless in the face of the evidence of Eva's betrayal. When they first met, she told him of her childhood in the orphanages of Eastern Europe, of the complete void that was her family. If the pocket watch is what it appears, then her story was merely designed to prey on the sympathies of a lonely, isolated boy separated from the only family he had ever known.

That family glances up at him, and Blair's eyes narrow at his labored breaths.

She does not even have to ask if he is alright. She knows, and when he abruptly leaves the room, memories chasing him every step of the way, she does not follow immediately.

* * *

><p>He is leaning on the balcony over the foyer, trying to marshal a whole platoon of painful memories into order, when she finally approaches.<p>

"At first," she says softly, "I thought this was a mistake."

The laugh comes out harsher than he intends. His mind is not behaving, and even worse, mixed in with the love and hate he feels for Eva, are memories of Blair. Memories of a limo and the long glorious sweep of hair over a black leather cushion. She has never been good for his sanity, but maybe he finally needs to embrace the insanity.

"It _was _a mistake," he tells her.

She shakes her head, and reaches over to grip his forearm, the warmth of her small hand reassuring and so nostalgic he has to literally swallow back the lump that forms in his throat. He has eighteen years of memories of her touching him there, exactly like that, and when he looks up at her, he knows he's lost his mind.

Whatever was left of it anyways.

Before he can even categorize the entirety of his action, he sees himself smoothing his other hand over hers, his thumb touching—no, _caressing_—the softness of her skin. He sees himself moving closer, just a millimeter at a time, until it seems like time and distance can be measured by the pull of her dark brown gaze. He can see the flecks of hazel in her eyes, and he registers that her pupils have dilated, but he is too far gone to step back and realize that he's fallen in deep.

She is so close now that it would only take a minute adjustment of position for his lips to brush hers, and it is this impossibility that jerks him back to the relative sanity of the ledge. The remnants of his free fall roar in his ears and he wants to shake his head to clear it.

He looks for a sign that she is as shaken up as he is by the almost-turn of events, but she is still and calm, watchful almost, as he steps back and gathers his wits about him.

"It wasn't a mistake," Blair says steadily, as if the last sixty seconds are lost to the winds of time and didn't happen after all. But they did happen, and they already haunt him. Possibilities he long discounted as impossible swirl like whirlwinds, enveloping him and destroying his peace of mind.

_Eva, Eva, Eva, Eva . . ._he chants to himself, as if he can force himself to remember the way it felt to love her when he was innocent and naïve and _stupid_.

But the truth has begun to seep into him and he is no longer as enamored with her memory as he once was; he no longer feels a massive black hole where his existence used to be, and it is not as if Blair has magically filled her place. Instead, it feels as if she has reassumed a position that should never have remained empty.

"Chuck," Blair repeats, trying, he knows, to grab his attention. "It _wasn't _a mistake. It was good that we did this. That you did this."

He doesn't point out that he did nothing, merely pulled the box down from the shelf and watched as she faced every one of his demons with one fearless glance.

"You needed this. And we found something to go on."

The last hour has left him dizzy, and he can only mumble out, "She didn't have any family. At least any she told me existed. She was an orphan, with nothing from her family."

Blair looks at him skeptically, and then down at the silver pocketwatch in her small hands. "Chuck," she says hesitantly, "this is a family heirloom."

"I know," he says with a sigh that isn't as heavy as his heart is. Hypocritically, he's always loathed liars. The universe must be having quite a laugh at his expense.

Carefully, she flips open the lid and after examining it for a minute, holds it out for him.

"An inscription," she adds, as he lifts it to the light to examine it.

It is impossible to deny what is staring him in the face—this is undoubtedly what Blair announced it was. Unfortunately the inscription is in German and since English is enough a struggle, it's unlikely that he'll be able to translate the words.

"Für Ludwig, behalten sie meine liebe mit euch ewig. Marie," Blair says softly, her accent sexy even in German, which is one of the few nationalities that Chuck never found particularly arousing.

"You speak German?" he asks in surprise. For all the years he has known her, Blair has had an astonishingly voracious appetite for learning, but when he left New York, she hadn't yet started studying German.

"A little," she admits self-consciously, as if there is some deficiency in not being fluent in any language they might need in their search. "Roughly, Marie pledges her love to Ludwig for all time."

"A romantic sentiment."

"It's a beautiful antique," Blair says, turning the piece over in her hands, as if she might absorb through her skin all the love imbued into the silver. She pauses, and lifts the watch into the light. "Wait, I think there's something else. Another inscription."

"What does it say?" Chuck asks, his curiosity overriding any latent fear that he'd felt.

"Ludwig Schulz, 1894."

Instantly, his phone is out of his pocket, and the name and year are texted to Andrew Tyler. But even for a private investigator of Tyler's caliber, results take time, and now that he has opened Pandora's box, Chuck feels his patience slipping.

"There . . ." Blair's voice is hesitant, and despite all his good intentions, he grasps her hand in his, holding it tight—as if he can absorb the bravery that flows so effortlessly through her veins.

"Tell me."

"There was . . .more. In the box."

He wants to tell the box to go to hell, but he is still Chuck Bass, and Chuck Bass doesn't do things halfway. "Then what are we waiting for?"

They approach the closet again, but this time their hands are clasped together; one being facing Chuck's demons. Blair herself isn't so certain that they aren't hers too.

"Wait." She grips his hand harder, and jerks him back before he can enter the spacious closet. "Before we do this, there's something you should know."

He waits expectantly as she tries to force the words out of her suddenly uncooperative vocal cords. "I hated her. I hated that she took you away. I hated that you met her. I hated that you picked her. I hated. . .you."

Chuck is speechless. He'd never believed that she cared. Only that she'd used him callously to get back at Nate. _The best friend with the girlfriend._

They'd been friends too, of course, so he'd naturally attributed any nostalgic longing in her voice to the fact that she'd missed their social destruction _tete-a-tetes._ But right now her eyes are pleading with him to understand that she'd cared about him. The realization floors him and then fills him with a horrible, gnawing guilt.

"I had to tell you," she finished, eyes drooping towards his feet. "It would have been wrong of me to go pawing through her things, if you didn't know."

He nods because he has no idea what to say to her. The foundations of his world are decimated, and she has just thrown fuel on the fire of his temptation.

"Why didn't you tell me?" His fingers tighten on hers as she continues to look down. As if she is frightened by what he will say.

"You mean why didn't I go after you when Bart sent you to France? I don't know," she chuckles bitterly. "Maybe it was for the best."

Frankly, he's not so sure of that, but she is so brittle right now, as if she could break at any moment, he doesn't want to push her further. So he lets it go, and lifts her chin with his free hand, forcing her gaze to meet his. "Blair, listen to me. I don't care that you hated her. Or that you hated me. God knows, I deserved it." He doesn't add that if she had had an inkling of his feelings back then, she never would have let him go to France. She would have followed him across the Atlantic, right into the teeth of Bart's guards. If he knows Blair Cornelia Waldorf at all, he knows she would have moved heaven and earth to get to him.

But in the end, the truth is still what he tells her. "It doesn't matter," he repeats, pulling on her hand. "I don't want you to feel some sort of misplaced guilt for hating her while she was alive." He doesn't want her to exist in the same half-life he does; not sure what is up and what is down or what is hot and what is cold. What is true and what is false. That existence is not for one such as she. He will do anything to prevent her from experiencing it, including lie if he has to, but this time he doesn't. The simple truth is powerful enough.

"Okay," Blair finally admits, the lift of her chin of her own making this time. He wants to tell her that he can't bear to see her downtrodden, but again he holds his tongue because the voice in his head (he is not sure if it's the devil or an angel) tells him that it's not the right time. But he knows Chuck Bass enough to know that whatever existed between them back in New York still has the power to draw them together.

She continues into the room without any additional prompting, heading straight for the box with none of the trepidation she experienced before. She pulls out an envelope. "This is it," she says with finality. "I thought there was more, but there's some faded ribbons in here too."

Blair hands the envelope to him, and before he can change his mind and leave the past uncovered, he opens it, the paper crackling in the silence.

"What is it?" she asks, and if he isn't mistaken, there is a fierce edge of eagerness in her voice. Her interest is piqued, and there has never been a more dangerous or potent combination than Blair and curiosity.

"It's a deed. To a house on _Rue de Saint-Sulpice_." The address is familiar, and his head aches as he desperately tries to remember where he has heard it before.

Out again comes Chuck's phone, and he inputs the address in another text message to Tyler.

"I hate waiting," Blair says petulantly, in a tone of voice that on any other woman would be grating, but on her is ridiculously charming. "What shall we do in the meantime?"

Chuck glances at his watch. "Would you like to get some lunch?"

She smiles beatifically at him and he realizes that this had been her goal in the first place. For some complex reason he doesn't want to examine too closely, Blair wants him to think he has the upper hand in their little arrangement.

He is about to suggest a nearby _brasserie, _which she has no doubt already selected, when the phone in his pocket chirps. He reads the text, disbelief sinking into his features. "It can't be."

"What is it?" Blair is at his side in a moment, the spicy fragrance of her perfume tickling his nose. "Is it your private investigator?"

"Yes." He is not sure what to tell her. He is not entirely certain that he believes Tyler, and yet there's never been a reason to distrust him. "Tyler knows what the house on _Saint-Sulpice _is. What it was used for."

A tiny crease appears between her perfect brows. "I don't understand."

His world is hurtling a hundred million miles per hour towards outer space. Perhaps towards a collision with the sun. "The house is notorious for. . .parties. Of a somewhat dubious nature." He has never been there, but he had heard of it years before he appeared in Paris and was neatly and so sweetly picked out and plucked up by Eva. For that is what undoubtedly happened; now he is certain of it. Rage rushes through him, but it's almost instantly replaced by shame.

"I still don't understand."

Blair has always been a study in contrasts—that virginal exterior with the fire beneath; her naivety combined with the conniving of a thousand courtiers. "It's not quite a brothel," he explains to her. "It's mainly a place for couples and others to go to . . .mingle."

"And I'm assuming 'mingle' is a metaphor here," Blair says quietly. For all her innocence, she has never been stupid.

"Correct."

"And these parties. . .do they require an invitation?"

He shook his head. "I don't believe so. The only thing they require is a mask."

"A mask?" Her eyebrow quirks at him questioningly. "For privacy?"

"Now you're beginning to grasp it."

She is quiet for a moment, and he knows she is trying to equate flawless society matron Eva with a woman who owns what could generously be termed a house of ill-repute. He wonders how she is doing with the equation because he himself is failing terribly.

"Chuck," she says seriously, her dark eyes so earnest, "we have to go."

At first he's shocked. He has even more trouble imaging Blair Waldorf at one of the _Saint-Sulpice_ parties than he does imagining Eva as the woman who threw them.

"No. Absolutely, unequivocally no."

"I'm in earnest," she continues as he shoves the lid on the box, hard. The cardboard, warped with age, cracks, and he doesn't even care. He pushes it and the watch and the envelope where it came from, on the shelf, and he wishes he could do the same for his knowledge of what they all mean.

"You said you wanted to know. You can't know if you don't go. There are a dozen reasons she could own the house. She could have been uninvolved with what actually happened there." She doesn't say it, but Chuck knows she is holding out as a bribe, as tempting as a baguette smeared with pâté, that Eva could have owned the house and stayed faithful.

Sweet, naïve, innocent Blair. So ruthless with her enemies, but so willing to believe in the silver lining.

"We are not going." His voice is hard, and as final as he can make it. That same voice closes deals in many Bass Industries boardrooms. It has never failed him.

It fails him today.

"You asked me to help you. You asked me to make the hard choices you couldn't make. I'm calling in my trump card. Tonight, we will go to _Saint-Sulpice, _whether you like it or not."

He turns back towards her, and wonders if he fell to his knees and begged if that would be more effective. Probably not. Blair has always had a particularly short fuse when it comes to pathetic weaklings.

"You don't understand what it could be like. You might have to witness. . .distasteful things."

Blair gave him that sweetly patronizing smile he remembered she used to put uppity minions in their place. "I'm sure I'll have to, but we need to know. _You _need to know."

He doesn't even make the argument that she will likely have to _do _distasteful things. When it comes to social destruction, he is sure she has done worse. Maybe he should worry less about wrapping her in cotton wool, and worry instead about how he will walk into that house knowing that it's the final piece of evidence he needs to prove that Eva was a cheating, lying whore.

"You win. _Saint-Sulpice _tonight."


End file.
